A study conducted by Harvard University and the Canadian Institute for Health Information finds that administrative costs in America’s health care system are almost twice that of Canada. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports that the US health bureaucracy consumes 31 percent of total health care spending. By comparison, Canada’s administrative expenses amount to only 16.7 percent. Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard, who led the team, says if the US were to adopt a single-payer health care system like Canada, the funds saved would be enough to provide insurance for the more than 41 million uninsured Americans. [Woolhandler, Campbell, and Himmelstein, 2003; Toronto Star, 8/21/2003]

The New York Times publishes an analysis of Harvard University’s admission policies towards Africans and African-Americans, and notes that while the admission of black students is rising, the percentages of those admitted are heavily skewed towards West Indian and African immigrants, and less so towards Americans of African descent. Some on the faculty say that African-American students were the intended recipients of affirmative action benefits more than non-Americans of African descent. Harvard professor Mary Waters says: “You need a philosophical discussion about what are the aims of affirmative action. If it’s about getting black faces at Harvard, then you’re doing fine. If it’s about making up for 200 to 500 years of slavery in this country and its aftermath, then you’re not doing well. And if it’s about having diversity that includes African-Americans from the South or from inner-city high schools, then you’re not doing well, either.” Another Harvard professor, Lani Guinier, whose ancestry includes Caucasians and Jamaicans, says: “Colleges and universities are defaulting on their obligation to train and educate a representative group of future leaders. And they are excluding poor and working-class whites, not just descendants of slaves.” [New York Times, 6/24/2004] Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, discussing the article on PBS’s Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, misrepresents the article in his opening discussion, saying: “Here’s something I bet you never thought you’d hear a liberal say: Harvard is letting in too many Africans. Yet that is exactly what a group of earnest liberals told the New York Times this week.” None of the academics and educators in the article say that Harvard or any other university is admitting “too many Africans,” or that Harvard needs to begin screening out African applicants. (Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters later notes that the transcript of Carlson’s monologue alters Carlson’s remarks, adding the word “almost” in front of “exactly.”) Media Matters notes that Carlson is a critic of affirmative action, having recently equated the program with “good old-fashioned segregation” and accusing the program of “fighting racism with racism.” Carlson also states that the article says “between one-half and two-thirds of the black students at Harvard” are either West Indian or African, but the article cites no such statistics. He also misquotes Guinier, and attributes other statements to academics and educators quoted in the article that they did not make. [Media Matters, 6/30/2004]

Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice and a rumored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012, makes the allegation that President Obama was a “terrible” college student who may have been admitted to the Ivy League universities of Columbia and Harvard because of his race. Trump offers no proof of the claim; it was first advanced in 2008 in a Wall Street Journal editorial that implied Obama was a “mediocre” student and demanded to see a college thesis that does not exist (see September 11, 2008). In 2009, author Jerome Corsi advanced the groundless claim that Obama was “placed” in Harvard Law School through the auspices of an African-American Muslim radical and a Saudi prince (see July 21, 2009). “I heard he was a terrible student, terrible,” Trump says. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.” Obama, like most politicians, has declined to release his college transcripts. Obama graduated from Columbia and then from Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Trump says Obama’s refusal to release his college transcripts is part of a pattern of concealing information about himself. “I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can’t get into Harvard,” Trump says. “We don’t know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.” Trump takes credit for “reinvigorat[ing]” the birther controversy, and boasts, “[T]he last guy [Obama] wants to run against is Donald Trump.” In his turn, Trump refuses to disclose his net worth. [NBC New York, 4/26/2011] Conservative pundit Pat Buchanan agrees, claiming on MSNBC’s Hardball that Obama only got into Harvard Law School because of “affirmative action.” Buchanan has made claims of blacks and Hispanics receiving “special treatment” because of “affirmative action” many times in the past (see May 28, 2009, May 31, 2009, June 12, 2009, June 20, 2009, July 16, 2009, and October 13, 2009). “I think the way was very probably greased, and I think he’s probably affirmative action all the way,” Buchanan says, and adds: “[L]ook… you know how the system works. You apply. He’s an African-American kid at a time where everybody’s saying: ‘Let’s bring those guys in. Give ‘em an advantage, move ‘em ahead.’” [Media Matters, 4/26/2011] Liberal pundit Keith Olbermann, writing on his personal blog, ridicules Trump’s demand to see Obama’s college transcripts, writing: “If that doesn’t work, it’ll be his list of movie rentals back in the days of VHS, or his Chicago White Sox ticket stubs to prove he really is a fan, or his laundry delivery records to make sure William Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or Karl Marx hasn’t been slipping him notes inside the suit pockets like they did in that John LeCarre spy novel.… Translated to this sorry chapter of sorry American politics, that means the Radical Right will keep the conspiracy theory going and simply change the focus.… [T]he debate has never been about whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. The debate has been about whether the Republicans could or can do by rumor, innuendo, and Fox propaganda, what they cannot do by the ballot: find the overarching ‘scandal’ with which to beat a Democratic president.” [Keith Olbermann, 4/27/2011]

A 1971 photograph of Barack Obama Sr. and Barack Obama Jr. [Source: Apex Newspix / London Daily Mail]The London Daily Mail uses information obtained by the Arizona Independent to attack President Obama’s father as a “serial womanizer” and “polygamist” whose eye for “white women” led to his expulsion from the United States. The article leads with the line, “With a father like this, it is little wonder President Obama did not want to release his full birth certificate” (see April 27, 2011). The Arizona Independent obtained files from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that imply US government and Harvard University officials, disapproving of Barack Obama Sr.‘s “licentious” ways, forced him to leave the United States. Obama Sr. married a white woman, Stanley Ann Dunham, who became Obama Jr.‘s mother, during a time when interracial marriages were still illegal in many parts of the US; moreover, Obama Sr. apparently had a wife in Kenya, making him in the eyes of some US officials a “polygamist.” Obama Sr., a student at Harvard University, “had an eye for the ladies,” according to the documents, and was warned by Harvard officials to “stay away from girls at the university.” Obama Sr.‘s application to extend his visa to remain in the US was eventually denied, in part because of his “polygamy” and, apparently, because of his predilection for dating white women. The file quotes an unnamed government official as calling Obama Sr. a “slippery character” who dated “several women.” Another immigration memo, from June 1964, records that Harvard officials were trying “to get rid of him” and “couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had.” The memo, which notes that Obama Sr. and Dunham had a child, Barack Obama Jr., on August 4, 1961, goes on to say that Obama Sr. should be “closely questioned before another extension is granted—and denial be considered.” The INS officials also apparently requested that Harvard withdraw his scholarship to attend college there. The memo says: “Obama has passed his general exams, which indicates that on academic grounds he is entitled to stay around here and write his thesis; however [Harvard] are going to try to cook something up to ease him out.… They are planning on telling him that they will not give him any money, and that he had better return to Kenya and prepare his thesis at home.” Obama Sr. took classes at Harvard and at the University of Hawaii in 1960, where he met Dunham in a Russian language course. Dunham apparently knew nothing of Obama Sr.‘s wife and child in Kenya, and their divorce in 1963, when their child Barack Obama Jr. was just two, may have been triggered in part because of Obama Sr.‘s previous marriage as well as his reported philandering. Obama Jr. saw his father once after the divorce, in 1971; 11 years later, Obama Sr. was killed in a car accident. [Daily Mail, 4/28/2011] Hours after the story is published online, Fox Nation, the blog for Fox News, prints a summation of it and directs readers to it. [Fox Nation, 4/28/2011]

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